Discipline
by Mercury Gray
Summary: After the Pevensies have returned to school, Peter's headmaster takes him to task for some discipline problems, trying to find out what happened to Peter over the holidays, and introduces him to a very old friend.


For those of you who don't know how my mind works, let me explain this story before you actually start reading it.

The headmaster of the school where I have currently enrolled Peter Pevensie, David Powlett Jones, (alternatively PJ or Pow-Wow) is not mine. He belongs to a lovely man named R.L. Delderfield, in a book called "To Serve Them All My Days." David's a World War One vet who returns home with a prescription from his doctor to get a bit of Devon air and a teaching job in a small, close knit school, and comes to teach at Bamfylde.

It's a bit of an obscure book, and was most recently referred to as 'that blue behemoth' by an acquaintance of mine who saw a copy in my bag, but it's a wonderful read and I encourage anyone who is going into teaching to read it. If you're not big on reading, the BBC did a mini-series adaptation in the '70s, I believe, and that's quite fun, too.

So, direct from the headmaster's office at Bamfylde School in Devonshire, this is Discipline.

-----

It was one of David Powlett-Jones's least favorite parts of the day – discipline. But rules were rules, and it had to be done. It confused David, though, who was on the list today – Pevensie Major was by most accounts a good, hardworking lad, diligent in his studies, a leader in his Form, and candidate for house prefecture when he was old enough. Pevensie Minor was much of the same – a smaller boy, very scholarly, but with none of the same problems this term. Something had to have gone wrong over the holidays, though, because the boy who sat woodenly in front of him now did not look a thing like the prior reports. He was not anxious about being called before the head, and had not offered a word in his defense yet. He was simply sitting there, waiting.

"Pevensie, your teachers report you're having some problems this term," David began, glancing over a sheaf of notes from Barnaby, Molyneux and Crosby, teachers who did not defer punishments to the head as lightly as some. "Uncompleted homework, sullen in class, picking fights with other boys…is there something I should know about here, Pevensie? Something you'd like to discuss with me?"

"No, Headmaster, nothing," Pevensie said resolutely, his eyes fixed on David.

"A rough holiday?" David offered kindly.

"Not really, headmaster. Nothing …out of the ordinary, anyway," the boy mentioned. David nodded.

"You're an evacuee, Pevensie, aren't you?" he asked, trying to make some sense of the situation and fill up this blasted silence.

"From Finchley, sir. Not quite London proper." His tone was curt, no-more-than-necessary. Business-like, David decided.

"Has your family moved back in yet?" the Headmaster inquired, folding his hands over his vest and watching the youngster.

"My mum's still there, sir. Father serving in the RAF."

That might be something, David noted to himself. "And your sisters? I seem to recall meeting some sisters last Founder's Day."

"Two, sir, both younger. They go to Lytton Hall," Pevensie elaborated in his elusive way.

"Must be a big responsibility, looking after three siblings," David offered. "Man of the house while your father's away and all that."

"Not so hard, sir," Pevensie said, sitting up a little in his chair with a hint of pride. PJ studied the schoolboy with care, observing the set of his legs, his back, his arms, the way his eyes stayed fixed on his interviewer. It was not a schoolboy's stance – he did not fidget or look away, but remained focused. David had known in his day plenty of schoolboy stares, too, and this was not one of them, either, full of defiant, youthful, brazen courage and devil may care attitude. Rather, Pevensie Major's look was calm, challenging a little, but not overly so, and tired, in a way. David knew that look well, too. It was the gaze of a young man grown old before his time, the stare of the sergeant in his foxhole and the soldier in his hospital bed, the eyes of a man who knows he has lost something precious and has given up all hope of ever getting it back.

Oh, yes, David knew those eyes well – he stared into them himself some mornings, in his own mirror, in the hospital before being shipped home, after Beth and Joan had died, and when Howarth had finally passed on. Peter Pevensie was a soldier, to be sure. But what was he soldiering for? His friends? His family? It wasn't as if he was old enough to be fighting anyone's battles just yet.

Makes no matter, some part of him said, a soldier's a soldier. Something struck him, a way to get through, and he turned around, pulling a slim volume off the shelf behind his desk, consulting the index in silence and finding the page he was looking for.

"As bronze may be much beautified,  
by lying in the dark damp soil  
so men who fade in dust of warfare fade  
fairer, and sorrows bloom their soul.

Like pearls which noble women wear,  
and, tarnishing, awhile confide  
unto the old salt-sea to feed  
many return more lustrous then they were.

But what of them buried profound,  
buried where we can no more find?  
who, trenched within the darkened earth  
Lie dark forever under abysmal war?"

David looked up from his book and studied his student again; The tight lipped, closed expression had left Pevensie Major's face, and he now seemed more pensive, digesting the poem and trying to maintain his aplomb at the same time. David knew that look, too, after years of teaching – something had made sense and touched him. "Sir?" the schoolboy finally asked, confused.

"Wilfred Owen," David offered, holding up the book so Peter could see the spine. "I read a lot of his work when I was in hospital in France, after being in the trenches for twelve months."

"You served, sir?" Pevensie asked, interested, leaning forward in his chair.

"I did my year," David admitted. "And it was hellish. Owen got me through therapy – very realistic about it all, none of your patriotic jingoism or platitudes. He knew what it was like, and he wrote just that. Take it," he said, offering the volume. "He's really very good."

Pevensie reached out for the book with a cautious hand, but the interest was genuine. "Thank you, sir," he said, and the gratitude was genuine, too. The enthused spark in his eyes told everything.

"Well, be on your way, Pevensie. I wouldn't want you to miss the sunshine on account of a disciplinary meeting."

"Am I not going to be punished, sir?" the boy asked, somewhat confused, holding the volume of poetry with both hands, as though he expected it to be snatched away at any given moment for a yet-unanswered-for offense.

"As long as you promise not to pick fights any more, and come talk to me if you've got something on your mind, I think we've about fixed the problem, don't you think, Pevensie?" David asked, smiling at the boy.

"Yes, sir," Peter said, nodding in agreement and cracking a shade of a smile.

David nodded, smiling. "There are people that understand you here, Peter, so long as you're willing to talk about it," he offered, going back to his papers.

"I'll remember that, sir." Pevensie went for the door, and turned around, thinking about something. "Sir…does it ever…go away? The feeling you get after you kill someone?" he asked, elaborating when his headmaster looked up with new interest.

"Eventually," David admitted. "But it changes you. You value life more after that," he decided. "Why do you ask?" he wondered aloud.

Pevensie shook his head. "No reason, headmaster. Thank you," he added, and left. Powlett-Jones finished writing his report on the matter and went to deliver the news to Crosby and Molyneux, sitting in the teacher's common room grading papers.

"So that's it? The problem's been solved?" Moly asked, glancing at David's notes. "Really, PJ, I must get your formula. I couldn't get the chap to translate a single sentence today, he refused to talk to me about it after class, and now you've got him outside, under a tree, reading! The picture of academia," the French teacher groused, pointing out the window where Pevensie Major could be seen, book in hand, unattentive audience to his brother Pevensie Minor's declamation practice.

"Move him into the sun --  
Gently its touch awoke him once,  
at home, whispering of fields unsown.  
always it woke him, even in France,  
until this morning and this snow.  
if anything will rouse him now,  
the kind old sun will know," David quoted. Crosby made a face and laughed.

"Owen?" she asked skeptically. "You gave a sixteen-year old Owen, and that did the trick?"

"You'd be surprised how many doors an old war horse's poetry can open, Crosby," David said lightly. "Sometimes the seeds just need to be woken up again."

Crosby exchanged a look with Molyneux that clearly said "PJ's losing his marbles – and that hasn't steered us wrong yet."

David nodded succinctly, smiling at the maths teacher and heading for the door, the rest of the poem running silently through his head as his shoes measured a cadence back to the Headmaster's office, slightly reminiscent of a soldier on march.

_Think how it wakes the seeds,  
woke, once, the clays of the cold star.  
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides,  
full nerved – still warm – too hard to stir.  
Was it for this the clay grew tall?  
-- o what made fatuous sunbeams toil  
to break earth's sleep at all?_

_-----  
_

I had an epiphany the other day that my newly anti-war Peter (already explored in That Word Honor) would appreciate the sentiments offered by Wilfred Owen in a lot of his poems, and it occurred to me (when I was reading Delderfield again) that David Powlett-Jones would be just the person to share those with him. The first poem is called As Bronze May Be Much Beautified, the second, Futility. In the first poem, the second to last line has been ad-libbed by me – Owen never completed it.

I don't claim that this is my best piece ever – at best, it's half-baked and still unexplained at parts – but I like something about it, and I want to share it with you. I hope you've enjoyed it.


End file.
